5.12 December 2015

The most significant component of this release are some changes to the User Interface, or UI for short.

The booking form - which is the pop-up window when someone creates a New Booking - will be enhanced as follows:

A cleaner, more modern look. Better use of white-space, shading and fonts.

'This Booking Belongs To' section is now called 'Driver Details' and performs exactly the same thing as before. It is just the label that has changed.

A row of tabs along the top, 'Booking Details' and 'Passenger Manifest'. More on this below.

The pop-up window is now draggable, meaning it can be moved around the page if you need to view something underneath it.

The key message is that the booking form does exactly the same thing as before, just a different look and label changes as described above.

Users should have no difficulty in absorbing the changes, so there should be no need to alert or notify your users.

The old booking form:

The new booking form:

Browsers

As we support a wide range of web browsers, there is a small chance the formatting and fonts of the new New Booking form may appear a bit 'wonky' if using an older browser. If you happen to field reports of strange behaviour in the booking form, please do send a screen shot and description to our help desk, help@poolcar.com.

We'd love to hear from you about any other desirable UI changes - please send your suggestions to us at help@poolcar.com.

Passenger Manifest

The 'Share a Ride' feature was very well received when it was released. But this required a (potential) passenger to take the initiative and request a ride.

With this release, the booking creator can now invite passengers on their journey with an automated email workflow, like with the Approve/Decline of requested seats.

The number of passenger seats is linked back to the vehicle 'No. of Seats' profile, and includes fields for origin/destination - ideal for 'milk runs' where passengers are picked up and dropped off, say a run from the airport to hotels.

As always, you aren't forced to use the passenger manifest, but it is there if you need it. It's all part of our philosophy of giving you the tools to reduce the wastage in your vehicle fleet.

Journey planning and Journey management will feature prominently in our plans for 2016.

Christmas/New Year Closures

We will continue providing support right through the holiday period, except for the public holidays here in Victoria:

Christmas Day, Dec 25th

Boxing Day, Dec 26th

New Years Day, Jan 1st

On the following days our office will close at 12 noon AEST:

Christmas Eve, Dec 24th

New Years Eve, Dec 31st

Coming off the back of a record year this year, we have a bumper year planned for 2016. In January we will send out a 'road-map' for 2016.

Wishing you and your families all a safe, enjoyable and relaxing holiday season.

Enhancements and Bug Fixes

Fuel card import template, support for addition of Total Spend columns. Appears some Caltex files split out the spend plus the admin fee as separate columns, which need to be added together to arrive at a total amount per transaction.